PSCU Payments Index June 2023: A Deep Dive on Money Services

The June 2023 edition of the PSCU Payments Index finds the continued trend of slower year-over-year growth for both credit and debit. As inflation has reached an inflection point, higher prices for many goods and services are still weighing on consumer spending decisions. In May, year-over-year growth in credit card purchases was negative for the first time since August 2020. While still positive, growth in debit card purchases exhibited a similar softening trend. This month’s Deep Dive highlights our Money Services sector, which has a more notable share of overall debit activity as compared to credit and includes peer-to-peer (P2P) activity of merchants and payment facilitators such as Cash App, Venmo and PayPal.

Key takeaways include:

• For the first time since the summer of the COVID-19 pandemic (August 2020), year-over-year growth in credit purchases was negative, finishing at -0.8% for May. Growth in debit purchases was positive at 1.6% for May and was half the reported growth from April 2023. Growth in transactions in May continued to be stronger than growth in purchases.
• For credit purchases, the largest contributor to growth was the Services sector (1.36 percentage points of growth) while offset by reductions in Gasoline (1.15 percentage points) and the Goods sector (1.03 percentage points). For debit purchases, two sectors generated the highest growth, with Services contributing 1.1 percentage points and Money Services contributing 0.9 percentage points. Debit purchases were offset by a reduction of 1.3 percentage points in Gasoline. Credit transactions were up just 0.4% and debit transactions were up 2.1%.
• Money Services represented 10.7% of overall debit purchases in May and includes peer-to-peer (P2P) payments with Cash App, Venmo and PayPal. There is notable growth in this sector when considering that for the pre-pandemic May 2019 timeframe, Money Services represented 3.8% of overall debit purchases. P2P payments are used at a greater rate by the youngest age demographic (Gen Z), representing 15.4% of their overall debit purchases.
• The credit card delinquency rate for May finished at 1.86%, above the May 2019 pre-pandemic level by 0.16%. Total credit card balances were up 12.7% for May compared to a year ago, while the average credit card balance for active accounts was $2,962, up 8.7% (or $238) year over year.

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